Yahoo’s Search Share Drops For First Time Since Firefox Deal Began

Yahoo couldn't maintain gains from previous months and small "switchback" losses to Google likely to erode share more in the coming months.

Yahoo’s share of search in the United States has dropped for the first time since it signed a deal to be the default search engine in Firefox. The drop follows two months of impressive gains. The loss suggests that a “high water mark” has been reached for gains the deal can produce for Yahoo and that “switchback” by Google users may now slowly cause Yahoo to give back share.

A Small Drop For Yahoo

In the middle of last November, Yahoo because the default search provider for Firefox users in the United States. While that includes mobile distribution, Firefox has virtually no mobile users. So, it is desktop search statistics that really show the health of that deal. The latest stats from StatCounter show Yahoo having a slight decrease from last month:



The drop from January 2015 to February 2015 is small, only 0.3%. However, it comes after two months of significant gains: 2.1% in December and 0.7% in January.

Google Remains By Far Largest On Desktop

Here is the desktop search share in the United States for February 2015, for the three largest search engines of Google, Bing and Yahoo, according to StatCounter. Next to the percentage is the gain or decrease compared to the previous month:

• Google: 74.9% (+0.3%)
• Bing: 12.6% (no change)
• Yahoo: 10.4% (-0.3%)

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